Charley and the dirty water

Wy-deelen is a word we learnt recently. It is a term (we think) used to describe anyone from China, but not from Shanghai. This covers anyone from a wealthy Beijing businessman here in Shanghai in his Mercedes (usually to be found parked at the edge of one of the freeways in the rush-hour, receiving his ticket from a traffic policeman - only Shanghai-registered cars are allowed on the freeways during rush-hour) to the 3 million migrants that have descended on Shanghai having heard that the streets are paved with gold. These people are usually found, with their extended families, dirty and sad and wearing pyjamas, queuing at bus stops, with their pink gingham suitcases. Sometimes, they can be seen riding their rusting bikes, often towing a pile of empty plastic containers. Charley is somehow able to identify a wy-deelen from a mile off, and his dislike for them is undisguised. The only reason I can find from him is that they have two or three children – no doubt a contentious issue for the law-abiding families that only have one child. The fine for having a second child when you’re not supposed to (certain families are exempt) is three times your annual income. For the average hard-working, gainfully-employed man like Charley, that amount of money would be impossible to find. For rural peasants, whose annual income may be £40 if they’re lucky, I assume that the amount is just as impossible to find, but the chances of anyone bothering to try and collect it are remote.

With this in mind then, one of Charley’s favourite pastimes (much to our horror I might add) becomes possible whenever it rains. When it rains in Shanghai, it really rains, throws it down, and all the cyclists put on their brightly-coloured cagools. These are hopeless though, useless at protecting them from the deluge of rain coming down and the dirty water splashing up, and just as useless at hiding their roots – wy-deelen or Shanghainese. Charley hunches over the steering wheel, and carefully adjusting his speed with a skill not normally apparent in any other of his driving activities, he waits for his wy-deelen victim to be perfectly positioned next to a pot-hole, at which point he aims right for the pot-hole, speeds up and completely covers the wy-deelen with around 10 gallons of dirty Shanghai road-water. Laughing manically, he carries on in search of his next victim, who could equally innocently be standing at a bus-stop.

But, living in a country of yin and yang, I was not surprised one recent morning when Charley arrived, telling a very sorry tale. Apparently, on his way home the previous evening in the rain, he had inadvertently driven into a pot-hole (or possibly a ditch, who knows) approximately 2 feet deep, full of water. The car had got stuck to such a degree that the passenger footwell even flooded with dirty rainwater. A group of wy-deelens kindly helped to somehow lift and push the car out of the hole. Ironic, I thought to myself, considering the only reason he was probably in the pothole in the first place was for the purpose of giving those same wy-deelens a good soaking.